Board of Trustees Kicks Off New Fiscal Year

The board of trustees got together on August 4-5 for our annual retreat (to Room 3!) to get to know new members Jane Bannor and Jim Clark, and get ourselves geared up for our new year.  Our new board president, Janelle Brittain, assembled an agenda that included collaborative communication, whys and hows of Policy Governance (the set of UU governance practices that we as a church having been using), selecting our board goals for the year, reviewing key aspects of our financial statements, and two guest speakers.

The most significant topic of our agenda was around taking our Policy Governance practices to the next level.  The board feels that we are working well together and we like the structure of Policy Governance, but that we perhaps spend too much time looking at staff reports instead of on our most important job of focusing on the big picture. Laura Park from Unity Consulting in St Paul, which specializes in UU Policy Governance, led us via teleconference in a 2 ½ hour workshop to help us improve on the areas where we think the board should do better.  We focused our discussion on increasing communication with the congregation (“board linkage”, in Policy Governance terminology), and on increasing attention on the congregation’s vision of ourselves and where we hope to be heading.

Our second guest speaker was Eileen Heineman, Director of Racial Justice Community Engagement at the Evanston YWCA.  Eileen spoke on sensitizing us to the sense of otherness anyone not fitting into a majority group might feel—and how best to approach situations where we want people to feel welcome and accommodated, but not singled out. Thank you to REAL for arranging this excellent talk.

Board goals for this coming year include:

• – Use a “powerful question” as a way to have deep conversation among the board and the congregation members that will help tune us into our shared vision

• – Improve board skills, especially specific skills around leadership and communication

• – Help assure that the Capital Campaign has a good start

• – Maintain good linkage with the congregation—gather information around needs and interests, and make sure relevant board information is shared with the congregation in interesting ways

 – Assure that the Long-Range Plan continues towards activation

In addition to Janelle, Jane and Jim, board members this year include Kerry Heckman, Heike Eghardt, Tom Ticknor, Susan Comstock, Gary Zachny and Jeanne Kerl.  All of us love to hear from anyone in the congregation—please grab any of us with any thoughts, ideas or concerns!